066 Stand by your Ham

Tonight I’m delighted to be heading up to Driffield in East Yorkshire to talk to Sisters and award winning pig farmers, Kate Moore and Vicky Scott @KateMorgan24 @vickypig27

The girls tell us about their family business, which their parents, David & Sue, started in 1996 with 800 breeding sows, selling the progeny as weaners. We also hear how they both got involved, initially by just helping out, and they’ve never been allowed to leave!

We discuss the business as it is now, with 1700 indoor, and 1200 outdoor sows, and the different systems involved, and how despite their slat based system being more profitable, why they’d prefer to rear them all on straw yards for welfare reasons.

We talk about how they manage their different roles within the business, with 5 family members involved, and how the pecking order was established early on with some Sister on Sister pitchfork violence!!

We hear about the importance of strict biosecurity, and how that’s helped to reduce antibiotic use, and also how running their own feed mill has helped them really control the quality of the pigs feed and have more influence over costs.

We also discuss the importance of communicating what we do as farmers and food producers to our customers, and what they’re doing to help in this regard, including regularly talking to school children.

And I couldn’t not ask about the record they took part in ‘STAND BY YOUR HAM’ a few years back to highlight poor prices in the pig industry (AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE – AMAZING!!)

All this and lots, lots more.

It was fantastic to talk to Vicky and Kate and learn more about large scale pig production in the UK and what they’re doing on their farm, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where they take their business over the coming years.

Check it out folks..

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